Yet Another Morris Invest Case Study

[Kimberly Klaas]

Hello everyone. This is another Morris Invest Case study. I'll start at the beginning and do my best to lay it all out. Please feel free to reply with any questions or comments. 

In early 2017 I discovered Morris Invest through a podcast. Not his originally, I am not sure whose. Then I started listening to his. I ended up making a phone appointment after researching for reviews and only seeing positive feedback. I had a talk with a gentleman whose name I cant remember. I was underwhelmed by this guys motivation. He was nice enough. Sent me a house or maybe two. He encouraged me to reach out to Lima Financial to discuss funding who, at the time, did say they were working with various MI clients. Regardless, we were nowhere ready to pull the trigger, I was trying to gather information more than anything. Fast forward to December and my mother decided to take a loan out on her house to remodel it and pull enough to buy a small rental. I looked into MI again still found nothing but positive feedback. BiggerPockets never came up in my searches, unfortunately. (I believe this to be an analytics fail as I found this community through word of mouth and one I checked out the website, then these posts about MI shot to the top of the search - just an interesting aside.) I scheduled another call and was hooked up with a guy named Glenn Radford. At this point, my mom had the cash so financing never came up. We pulled the trigger in Feb. and bought a house in IN. We were told that the rehab would take 4 to 8 weeks and then it would be rented out for $700. I was told that we would be given photos at the midway point of rehab and an eta on finishing the project so we could then hook up with the property manager to sign a contract and start the rental process. 

April rolls around and I haven't heard anything. April 4th I shoot off an email to Nicole, the operations manager, and Kate, the project manager. Nicole writes back on April 5th to say she has "spoken with boots on the ground" and though she was still waiting for an update on the rehab, she had "great news." The property had been purchased with a tenant! She goes on to explain how very lucky we are that we have a great tenant who is willing to stay while work is happening and has already agreed to pay market rate once the rehab is complete. Immediately -all the flags are raised. We purchased the property as empty. How could they not know it had tenants? And if they had tenants, where is my mom's money? Who is collecting that money and why had they not reached out to let us know? And who authorized the property management to negotiate rent on a house that is not under contract with them? 

I reached out to Pam at BlueSky who is the client liaison. She was super friendly and oh so helpful. I told her about the email from Nicole and that she had told me there is a renter. She confirmed that there was indeed a renter at $450. When I asked what rent had been negotiated for after the rehab she told me that that info was not in her notes and that she had to reach out to the leasing department but that she would get back to me. I asked if she had contact with the contractors since BS was managing the property and she said yes and that she would reach out to ask where they were in the rehab process. She also told me to fill out the contact and banking info so she can get the rent payments sent.  I went ahead and did so about a week or so later. 

I called her various times and she kept saying she was sorry but no one was getting back to her from either the leasing department nor the rehab team. Hmmm . . . So I sent the following email: 

After I sent this I immediately call Pam at BlueSky. It took a few tries but she finally picked up. I asked some of these questions to her directly. SHe admitted it doesn't make sense that no one knew about the tenants, that a year lease was signed at the low rate (which after reading the other posts I believe is fake), and was silent when I asked who authorized them to sign a lease at all. She agreed that we should all have a conference call and agreed to make herself available. Kate from MI replied back that she would make herself available but Glenn, the MI sales guy, informed me he was far too busy and Nicole, the MI operations manager, has yet to reply at all. 

I am in contact with a property manager from these threads and am in hopes of getting some photos and confirmation about the tenants, if there is even a house, if it is worth pursuing, etc. At this point, my main goal is to get Clayton Morris to buy it back. I sent  FB message through his personal account Friday night. A bot replied so I have no idea if he has seen in. tomorrow I start posting on his pages and YouTube channels. Any other advice would be appreciated. Or if anyone had his direct email or number, even better. 

For those of you who have shared your own stories previously, I will be reaching out to you shortly. 

Thank you for your time - I hope this helps someone. I will keep updating as this progresses.